Sunday, January 22, 2006
One wounded soldier
In a companion piece to a story on one Marine's struggle to recover from his wounds, the NY Times has a companion piece about the family of a soldier who was not so fortunate.
On Dec. 26, 2004, Sgt. Gray, then 34, a member of the 133rd Engineer Battalion of the Maine Army National Guard, was driving in a convoy outside Mosul, Iraq, when a bomb blew up underneath his truck.
He has been in hospitals ever since. Blind and severely brain damaged, he cannot speak, move voluntarily or communicate. He is fed through a tube implanted in his stomach. Though he appears unaware of his surroundings, family members say they believe he hears their voices when they visit. But his medical records describe his condition as a "persistent neurovegetative state" from which he is unlikely to emerge.
"They don't think he has any chance for recovery," said Laurie Gray, 37, who drives an hour and half each way from her home in Penobscot to spend nearly every day at his bedside at the Togus Veterans Affairs Medical Center here.
"I've accepted this is the way it could be, but I also haven't given up hope," Ms. Gray said. "You never know, there could be a miracle."
His parents say they too are praying for a miracle. "If you don't have hope, what do you have?" said his mother, Claudette.
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